...a shiny new 2GHz Intel Core 2 Duo MacBook with 2 GB 667 Mhz DDR2 SDRAM, courtesy of my new job. It's too bad about the big honkin' company-that-owns-my-company bar code sticker they have to put on the top, to serve as a constant reminder of who owns me, but hey, that's a minor complaint. It gets here in a week or so, and none too soon, because the Book of Power has been awfully sluggish lately -- not to mention the fact that the CD drive sort of...quit accepting discs a couple weeks ago. I need to take it to get looked at, and I've been reluctant to do that so far because it might need more than a quick fix. We'll see.

They're also getting me a copy of Windows (Vista, I guess?), Office for both Mac and Windows, and Parallels Desktop. Last night when Indigo indy1725 and I went to Missing Link to see the aforementioned Kurt Halsey show, the guys at the store showed us Parallels running on their iMac behind the counter. It seemed pretty slick. (The show, by the way, was cool, although tiny -- two paintings and a handful of drawings. Still, it was exciting to see his stuff in non-LiveJournal-icon format. Intellectually, I know that art looks a lot different in person than it does at 72dpi, but it still never fails to impress me. I was all, "They're so texture-y!" and Indigo was like, "Yep, uh, that's how that works." Hee.) While we were there, I also bought a small birthday present for J-J meterbridge. It was difficult, mostly because everything in the store was screaming out, "Buy me for J-J", but I think I managed to narrow it down.

Speaking of events that occur near the beginning of February, work is flying me back to New York from the 5th through the 8th, or something like that. I'm moving on the 10th. Um, there'll be plenty of time for packing on the 9th...right?

That's the exact same machine Ross got for Christmas, by the way (down to the 2G of RAM). He loves it to pieces, and feels badly because he hasn't run the CPU over 25% yet (he doesn't run processes on his machine very often).

What size are you getting? I ask because Ross has been frustratingly unable to find a case that fits his 13" machine.

It's the 13-inch (that's the only size that the reg'lar MacBooks are available in right now). It's the nicer of the two white ones they have available (plus the extra RAM), which as far as I can tell is no different from the black one except for a smaller hard drive (80GB instead of 120GB) and a $200 lower price tag. Since it's possible to get a 120GB drive on the white one for $150, that pretty much tells me that anyone who gets the black one is doing it for looks alone. Not that it's against the law to buy a computer for looks. I'm just sayin'.

Ah, yes, the case question. I haven't looked for a 13" case specifically, but I know that my bag came with a really nice padded sleeve for my 15" PowerBook, and they sell the sleeves individually, too. They'll make them in any size you want. In fact, they say, "SPECIFY LAPTOP MODEL IN THE COMMENTS SECTION - IF YOUR LAPTOP IS NOT A MAC, WE WILL ALSO REQUIRE THE DIMENSIONS." If I were Ross, I'd specify the dimensions anyway, because someone who isn't familiar with the MacBooks yet might look at it and go "Thirteen what?"

he hasn't run the CPU over 25% yet

See, this is why I'm excited! I've been unhappy with the performance of the Book of Power lately, like when I'm running big regexes on big XML files, which I have to do a lot. I'm honestly not much of a gadget geek (I geek out more over intangibles), but when it's a gadget that helps me do my job faster and looks rad, and is free, well, I'm all over that.

My laptop bag has a sleeve for a 15" laptop. That worked fine with my PowerBook. HOWEVER, the MacBook Pro is a half-inch wider than the PowerBooks. This makes it a snug fit. I now need to tug a bit to get my laptop in and out of my bag, and it sucks.